Facebook Share Price Recovery Stumbles

The price recovery of Facebook Inc’s (NASDAQ: FB) shares was trending, but they are selling down again. Optimism that the social network has found a way to raise rates on the ads it runs, and that it had unlocked the value of its users who access the site on mobile devices, moved shares from less than $26 at the end of last year to almost $33 at the end of January. Since then, the stock has declined to less than $27.

There is no single cause for the drop. One trigger may be the success of LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD). Investors like the company because it has multiple sources of revenue, which Facebook, despite its efforts, does not. Another red flag for Facebook investors is research that says people spend less time on the site than they did just months ago.

Finally, Facebook continues to be grouped with a series of Web 2.0 companies, including Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) and Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN), which should have been sold privately to large companies like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and not pawned off on public corporation investors.